Ashes Of The Phoenix. Jane Fade Merrick

      Like every morning Fade was in a foul mood. While she skated through the streets of her neighbourhood, she tried to think solely about what she would eat for lunch and, above all, how to get her hands on it.

      From the first day she had appeared on those streets, she presented herself as a shabby light-skinned girl with worn clothes - who looked as though she had never been kissed by the sun - with long red hair tied in a weird hairstyle.

      As though she wanted to recreate a disturbing mythological monster, she regularly consumed cans of hair wax to create a long red arch extending forward from her forehead and two smaller arches protruding from her nape.

      To almost everyone she looked really ridiculous with that strange and cumbersome ‘thingamajig’ on her head, but they also found it useful because it could be seen from a distance, giving them the possibility to switch direction in order to avoid meeting her.

      Fade stopped at a small market store and gazed inside the front door. The place was not that great: it was small, dark and full of stuff piled on top of the other without any logical sense.

      â€œIt’s perfect,” she thought, and immediately disappeared inside.

      â€œIt’s so tight that I can barely fit my hair in it” she thought while searching for a hidden corner in order to grab some cans of food. As soon as she found it, she began to view the goods with a vague air.

      â€œTuna fish in oil, green olives, shrimp, anchovies... It’s not exactly the best but I’ll settle for it...”.

      Once she was sure that no suspicious floorwalker was around, she grabbed a can of tuna fish and hid it in a pocket of her ragged trousers, the huge black shirt she was wearing did the rest, falling flaringly on her legs to cover any suspicious bulge. Finally, as an experienced street performer, sliding backwards on her rollerblades, she randomly picked up another can and quickly put it in her other pocket, ending her sleek trick by skating up to the cash register, where she would pretended to complain that there was nothing to her liking in the shop.

      The precision of her plan, however, was marred by a small detail, so small as not to be seen. Before she finished her turnaround, the girl bumped against something behind her, tumbling to the ground and dropping a bunch of cans and other goods on the floor. The disastrous tumble brought her face to face with the cause of her fall, a stunned child of about twelve years old who stared at her with black and round eyes.

      At first she felt the instinct to attack him, but once she took a good look at him, she retraced her steps: something about the child was disturbing and fascinating at the same time.

      First of all he had pink hair - “Which is rather odd for a child,” she thought - cut in a straight bob and furthermore, he was also dressed in a rather bizarre way. He was wearing a sort of miniature lab coat which fell widely over a pair of baggy camouflage pants, and finally, on his head he wore a pair of round goggles with red lenses.

      â€œIs he a cosplayer?” she wondered, trying to remember in which time of year the Comics Exhibition took place in the city and also trying to remember what day, month and year they were in.

      The infinity of the moment was interrupted by the shouts of the salesman, for her shirt had risen above her pant pockets, and he clearly saw the can shaped bulges beneath the fabric of her pants, and realized they were stolen goods.

      Fade clumsily stood up among the general confusion and the relentless gaze of the child, slipping between the scattered products, ran like hell and disappeared among the streets of the neighbourhood.

      When she was sure she was out of danger, she stopped to catch her breath hitting her shoulder on the wall of an alley.

      â€œDamned that stupid brat!”

      She looked around again suspiciously and then moved quickly away, again aligning her movements to the orchestra of her thoughts.

      The indelible signs of the past